


Too Wise to Woo Peaceably

by galateaGalvanized



Category: Les Misérables - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - College/University, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-02-03
Updated: 2015-02-03
Packaged: 2018-03-10 06:39:36
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,102
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3280466
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/galateaGalvanized/pseuds/galateaGalvanized
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The irony of his <i>pro patria mori</i> shirt is lost on Enjolras.</p>
<p>Fortunately, it isn't lost on Grantaire.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Too Wise to Woo Peaceably

There’s peace and quiet in the student co-op until the 10AM classes let out, when students swarm in for warmth and coffee.  No one wants to brave the cold weather, and the room exceeds carrying capacity by noon.  Enjolras has made it through three revisions of his politics paper and an outline of topics to cover at the next ABC meeting when someone clears their throat next to his table.  He looks up to find a sheepish student in a worn black beanie trying to get his attention.

“Sorry to bother,” the student says.  “But I really need to get an assignment done while I wait for my order—can I share your table for a bit?  Five minutes tops.”

“No problem,” Enjolras says, making a token effort to shift some of his papers into order.  He tries to refocus on his reading, but the interruption of his work flow has made him aware, suddenly, of how much warmer the room has become.  He stands and shrugs out of his jacket, and watches the man’s eyes dip down to Enjolras’ chest in a double take before coming back up.  Enjolras raises an eyebrow.

“Oh, sorry,” the man says.  “It’s just—I like your shirt.”

Enjolras looks down in surprise, and the words _pro patria mori_ in red, white, and blue stare back at him.  He smiles in spite of himself.  “Yeah, not many people would appreciate it.”

His guest shifts his green scarf around his neck, revealing the word _libertine_ in elegant white script across the chest of his own shirt.  “I’m Grantaire,” he says, holding out a hand.  “And I do.”

Grantaire’s hand is warm and calloused, easily encompassing Enjolras’.  There’s a bit of paint flecking the knuckles.  “I’m Enjolras,” he says.  Grantaire’s eyes are very blue, shining out beneath thick black eyebrows and above thick dark circles.  “Good to meet you.”

“Grantaire!” one of the co-op servers calls out, and both of them jump.  Grantaire still hasn’t let go of his hand.

“You know, if you appreciate this shirt, you might swing by the Musain at 7 tonight,” Enjolras says, thoughtful.  “I’m part of a political society that meets there.  We’re always looking for new members.”

Grantaire lets his arm drop.  “The coffee house off of Main?  I’ll think about it,” he says, shouldering his messenger bag and standing.  “I could always do with more satire in my life.”

Enjolras watches him go with an odd sense of pride.  He’s halfway into his ethics of globalization paper before he thinks to question Grantaire’s meaning.

-

The meeting is a disaster, Grantaire is a disaster, and everything is terrible.

“What did you think would happen?” Combeferre asks, imminently reasonable even as he holds an ice pack to Enjolras’ cheek.

Enjolras stares at him.  “Not this,” he says.  “How could I have predicted this?  He liked my shirt!”

Combeferre’s tone is gentle even as the hand holding the ice pack is not.  “I’ll grant that you couldn’t have foreseen the bodily injuries,” Combeferre allows.  “But you don’t think there are, potentially, more widely accepted views on Horace?”

“’Ah yes, that old lie’,” Enjolras scoffs.  “I’m not an idiot, ‘Ferre.  I’m not advocating martial prowess with the ultimate goal of dying in war.  Still, dying for what you believe in, _patria_ or otherwise, isn’t a bad way to go.  Plus, he was wearing a _libertine_ shirt.  I thought that meant he was a free-thinker.”

Courfeyrac laughs at his shoulder, equal parts smug and fond.  “I love you, chief, but that’s definitively not what that word means.”

Combeferre digs his phone out of his pocket and pulls something up with one hand.  The dictionary.com app reads two clear definitions: the latter being Enjolras’ understanding of the word and the former being, quite obviously, Grantaire’s.

“Fuck,” Enjolras says, with meaning.

“Probably what he was expecting,” Courfeyrac leers.

Enjolras puts his head in his hands.  “Oh god, this was all a misunderstanding.  I should let him know.”

“That might’ve worked before you both ended up half-concussed,” Combeferre says.  He hands the half-melted icepack to Joly and swaps it for a new one.  “And no, Enjolras, I’m not letting you ignore this and hope you never see him again.”

Enjolras looks unwillingly to the door, where Grantaire had stormed out just fifteen minutes before with the beginnings of a truly impressive black eye starting to darken along his cheekbone.

“I probably won’t see him again, in all probability,” he says.  “He’s not coming back after that debacle.”

-

Grantaire, evidently, loves to prove Enjolras wrong.  The news of “that debacle” makes the campus rounds in a matter of hours, and Enjolras is having a much harder time forgetting than expected.

“Is it true that you and Grantaire had a fencing match on top of the Musain’s pool table?” a girl from his East Asian politics class asks when he’s sitting down to lunch in the dining hall.

“How would you get a black eye from a fencing match?” he asks her, perplexed.  “And no, it’s not.  He tripped, I tripped, a couple of chairs tripped.  It was an accident.”

“So was the Cuban Missile Crisis,” he hears.  “But that had fewer casualties. Hey, do you guys meet every Tuesday at the same time?”  Grantaire looks down, cocking an eyebrow at the girl until she leaves in a huff. 

“Yes.  Trying to figure out when you have to avoid the Musain?”

“Something like that.”  Grantaire moves to leave, and Enjolras feels a tug of guilt deep in his gut that he blames entirely on Combeferre.

“I’m sorry about last night,” he says, sincere, and stands up in courtesy.  “I may have misinterpreted your, uh, interpretations.  Of our respective shirts.”

Grantaire scoffs as he adjusts his backpack.  “I can hardly be faulted for assuming that no one in their right mind would wear a _pro patria mori_ shirt unironically.  You can’t pin what happened on my ‘interpretation’.”  He uses air quotes.  Enjolras burns.

“Well, I can hardly be faulted for your lack of creativity!  Words mean only the things we assign to them, after all.  I’m giving my life in dedication to my country, and I’m proud of that.” 

“How naïve can you get?  Giving your life to your country—hah, the best you’d manage is to make it the minutest amount less abysmal to minorities and the working class than it already is.  What is it that you think one person’s life is worth, Enjolras, against centuries of oppression and the terrible, awful instincts of the human race?”

“One person’s life spent inspiring others to act is the only thing that has ever changed our society,” Enjolras snaps, heedless of the dozens of eyes turned their way, the hush settling over the other dining hall patrons.  “It’s attitudes like yours that contribute to the persistence and degradation of the system you scorn.”

“It’s attitudes like yours that make it impossible for policies for the common man to proceed apace, what with your inability to compromise your insane idealism.  You’d rather see the poor starve than settle for anything less than some neo-classical egalitarian commune that’s never going to happen!”

They’re both breathing heavily, hands clenched at their sides.  Grantaire makes a clean about-face and storms out of the hall.  At the back of the room, some asshole starts a round of applause.

-

“Maybe not the best way to apologize,” Combeferre says equanimously at their group brunch the next day.  “But I’ll admit that it’s generated a good bit of publicity for the ABC.  Granted, it’s mostly students asking how to get in on your so-called flash mob debates.”

Courfeyrac grins.  He takes terrible joy in harmless misfortunes.  He’s made banana chocolate chip pancakes for brunch today, though, and Enjolras forgives him.  “No such thing as bad publicity.  Unfortunately, the owners of the Musain don’t exactly agree on that note.  They’ve asked us to meet elsewhere until the ‘internal club conflicts’ have died down.” 

Courfeyrac also uses air quotes, Enjolras notes absently, and it’s not half as annoying.  “Did you tell them that our conflict has left the building?” he asks.

“They’d still like us to lay low for a couple of weeks.  We’re good friends, and they appreciate our business, but we did cost them a lamp and three chairs.”

“Which we paid for.”  Possibly exorbitantly overpaid for, actually.

“Yeah,” Courfeyrac agrees.  “Still, I know the Tuesday night bartender at the Corinth, and she said she wouldn’t mind a little more excitement in her life.”

“Hopefully the only excitement we’ll be dealing with will involve the petition preparations.”  Enjolras stands up from their breakfast table, satisfied with both discussion and pancakes.  “I’ll send an e-mail out to the club with the new meeting location.  Thanks for the quick work, Courf.  Combeferre, keep me updated on your communications with the board.”

Combeferre smiles wryly, fondly.  “Don’t get into any more fights, Enjolras.”

-

Enjolras follows Combeferre’s advice right up until he walks through the doors of the Corinth at 6:45 on Tuesday night.

“What the fuck,” Grantaire says, his elbows crossed on the bar.  A couple of empty cups and a plate of curly fries sit in front of him.  Behind the counter, Courfeyrac’s contact Musichetta laughs and pours him another beer, a preemptive strike.  “You told me 7 pm at the Musain.”

 “We got kicked out,” Enjolras says, unable to keep from adding, “no thanks to you.”

“To me!” Grantaire exclaims.  He seems on the wrong side of tipsy, worse than he was the week before.  He grabs his new drink and mocks a toast to Enjolras.  “No; to you, and all your ideals doomed to failure and fire.”

Enjolras flushes in anger, a red and blotchy thing that goes all the way down his chest.  Grantaire watches it migrate southward with unwilling fascination.  “You don’t have to believe in our purpose to respect it.  Try to limit your contributions to the useful, if you must.”

Grantaire mimes zipping his lips and turns back to the bar.  The area set up for the ABC’s use is in the back corner, behind a wooden partition that stretches a third of the way across the room.  It’s enough to maintain the illusion of privacy, but not quite enough to prevent the exchange of sounds.  The ABC members seem excited about the prospect of the petition, a protest, and the ready availability of alcohol at the meeting.

Musichetta swings by again to refill drinks as the meeting is trailing off.  “You must be Enjolras,” she says, and it isn’t a question.

“Guilty,” Enjolras says, and extends his hand.  She doesn’t take it.

“Grantaire had been thinking about going to the Musain again, you know,” she says.  “I didn’t tell him that you were going to bring the party here instead.”

Enjolras can think of no possible reason why Grantaire would want to return, barring the need to sow more seeds of chaos.  “Well, we’re always looking for new members who believe in the cause and are willing to put in the effort,” he stresses, somewhat unnecessarily.

Musichetta looks around the group of people hanging around after the meeting, smiling briefly at Cosette and Eponine.  “You do look like you could use more feminine influence,” she says.  “But you could also use more dissenting opinions.  You know, to make your arguments stronger.”

“We’ll take it under advisement.”  He crosses his hands behind his back and straightens his shoulders.  He will not be cowed into talking to Grantaire again, let alone inviting him back to the ABC.

“Don’t get your hopes up, ‘Chetta,” Grantaire says, emerging from the crowd like a wisp of smoke, an ember under an abandoned campfire.  Enjolras startles to notice a series of watercolor tattoos dripping down his forearms, revealed by rolled up sleeves.  It’s almost enough to distract him from Grantaire’s statement.  “His type doesn’t believe in realism.  I mean, did you hear what they expect a single student-body petition to be able to accomplish?”

Enjolras sees red.

-

Combeferre and Courfeyrac sandwich Enjolras between them on the couch and continuously resupply his bowl with fair trade kettlecorn.  Kenneth Branagh’s _Much Ado About Nothing_ plays merrily on the laptop screen in front of them.

“Hey, at least no one’s face got bruised this time,” Courfeyrac says through his own mouthful.

“Some egos did, though,” Combeferre adds.

They fistbump over Enjolras’ sulking head.  Enjolras isn’t entirely sure why they thought this endeavor would help the matter of his emotional distress at yet another balls-to-the-walls fight with his public enemy number 1.

“Seriously though, Enjolras,” Courfeyrac says once he’s finished doing elaborate fistbump explosion pantomime.  “I’ve never seen you react this strongly to a single person.  To whole swathes of the _Front National_ , yes, but never to an individual.  What is it about Grantaire that sets you off?”

Enjolras falls quiet.  On screen, Benedick and Beatrice snipe at each other mercilessly.  “You know that voice at the back of your mind,” he starts, slowly, as if he isn’t sure what he’ll end up saying but is willing to say it anyways, “that acts as the counterpoint to everything you do?  The one that insists you’re going to fail, or that everyone must be laughing at you, or that you’ve made a terrible mistake? It’s particularly loud just as you’re going to sleep, when you don’t have friends around to reassure you.  And then you want to punch it in the face once you wake up, because you know it’s wrong, but it still makes you doubt yourself in the darkness.  You know the one?”

“Sure, Enjolras,” Combeferre says, gently.  Even Courfeyrac looks considering.

“Well, Grantaire sounds like that voice,” Enjolras says, then angrily stuffs his mouth full of popcorn and refuses to say anything more until the end of the movie.

-

Musichetta signs up for the mailing list and swaps her Tuesday night shift so she can attend the next meeting.  Joly and Bossuet nearly fall over themselves trying to shake her hand.

“You’re all so enthusiastic,” she says, with all the amusement of a woman who knows exactly what she’s doing and how.  “I admire that.”

Feuilly groans. “Oh god.  They’re going to be like overexcited golden retriever puppies for the rest of the night.”

Musichetta quirks an eyebrow.  “I’m a dog person.”

Joly and Bossuet don’t start panting, but it’s a close thing. 

Mid-meeting, Grantaire slips into the shadows at the back, nursing a beer.  Enjolras doesn’t stumble over a single word, but their eyes keep meeting across the long line of tables.  Every time Grantaire scoffs at something he says, Enjolras speaks a little louder.  He’s practically hurling his words into the back corner by the end of his speech, and _Les Amis_ are trying and failing to contain their laughter.  Enjolras falls silent, and Grantaire slowly, carefully, raises his hand.

“Yes, Grantaire?” Enjolras asks, expecting a nonsensical call for sources or a devil’s advocate position.  He runs through his counter-counter-arguments in his head.

“I’m pretty sure we hit 400 ppm CO2 in May of 2013,” Grantaire says, simply, and lowers his hand.

Enjolras breathes hard through his nose and promises to fact check his figures, and the meeting continues apace.  When he gets home that night, he finds an e-mail from Grantaire waiting in his inbox.

_Fearless leader,_ it reads.  _You told me to limit my in-meeting contributions to the useful, so I did.  That said, here are some_ _links explaining why the human race is fucked for climate change no matter what we do_.

What follows are, as promised, a series of links to scientists detailing the greenhouse gas threshold, and a tiny P.S. that says, simply, _you’re cute when you’re pissed._

Enjolras is sorely tempted to print the e-mail out just for the joy of being able to rip it to shreds.

-

Weeks pass.  With the excessive use of e-mails, Enjolras and Grantaire manage, eventually, to limit their louder arguments to after the meeting’s official conclusion.  The Musain welcomes them back after assurances that the club will refrain from property damage.  The first night they’re back at the café, Enjolras is fifteen minutes early reviewing the meeting’s main talking points with Combeferre.  His shoulders are tense and he keeps looking around, not entirely sure what he’s looking for.  He feels as though he’s at the top of a stratospheric roller coaster for the entire meeting, his stomach dropping by increments every time someone passes by their section of the room.  He’s frustrated and antsy for no apparent reason, and the meeting finishes earlier than usual.  It’s only when he turns to ask Grantaire his opinion that he realizes, with a start, that Grantaire isn’t there.

“You alright, chief?” Courfeyrac asks afterwards, when they’re distributing more copies of the solar array petition and discussing this week’s task distribution.

“Fine,” Enjolras says.  He glances towards the door.

Eponine notices.  “Grantaire had an art showing tonight,” she says, and Enjolras swallows a flush of shame at the idea that he had been that obvious.

He remembers, suddenly, the paint flecks on Grantaire’s hand when they first met.  “I didn’t know he was that good.”

“Oh, he’s not.  Yet,” she amends.  “He works as a waiter at a nearby gallery.  Gotten a few contacts that way, apparently.”

“I—wait, Eponine, you never told me you knew Grantaire.”

Eponine laughs.  “Tell you and get grilled about his political leanings?  No thanks; I’m getting enough of that from one corner already.  Look, I’ll say this since he’s not here.  Go easy on Grantaire, okay?  He’s been through Hell.  I didn’t say anything before because I didn’t think this would last as long as it has, but I haven’t seen him care about anything as much as he cares about your dumb debates.”  Her voice gets quieter, her cheekbones sharper and her eyes darker.  “That said, there’s something you need to understand.  I respect you, but if you do anything to fuck up Grantaire’s recovery, I will personally disembowel you and send your tattered remains to Thailand.  Are we clear?”

“Crystal,” Enjolras says.  He has no idea what Grantaire is recovering from, let alone how to avoid impeding that recovery, but he doesn’t doubt Eponine’s ability to follow through on her threats.

That night, he pulls up his e-mail to check for a message from Grantaire.  Sometime over the past few weeks he’d started to expect one, and he’s disappointed to find his inbox empty.  He loads a new e-mail instead.

_Grantaire_ , he writes.  _Since you weren’t at the meeting, I’ve made a list of all the ways in which it’s possible to continue to feed the Earth’s growing population without the excessive use of GMOs, and how the sustainable use of polycultures can achieve the same limits on our pesticide usage_.

The cursor blinks at the bottom of his e-mail, waiting.  Enjolras wants to ask, _why did you go through Hell_ and _how did you get out?_  He wants to ask, _how’s your recovery going_ and _do you really care about our debates?_  Finally, Enjolras scrawls, _I hope the gallery showing went well_. 

He hits send before he can delete it.

-

The frequency and volume of their arguments don’t improve after that, but the tone certainly does.  _Les Amis_ become well-accustomed to waiting an extra five minutes for Grantaire and Enjolras to wrap up the argument _du jour_ before heading over to the Corinth for a round of drinks.  Enjolras will admit, if only to Combeferre and Courfeyrac, that being constantly questioned has made his arguments stronger and his counterarguments better informed.  Eponine claps Enjolras’ shoulder in solidarity after one seemingly standard meeting, saying she’s glad she doesn’t have to dismember him.  He finds out later that she’d been referencing Grantaire’s three months clean—a milestone he’d never reached before.  Much later, he asks the questions he’d refrained from asking in his e-mail.

The first warm day in April, Enjolras breaks out his _pro patria mori_ t-shirt again.  At that night’s meeting, he smiles to see Grantaire wearing his _libertine_ shirt.  He wanders over to the table Grantaire has appropriated for his own use, a sketchbook in his lap and a cup of coffee in his hand.  “Can I share your table for a bit,” Enjolras echoes, leaning over to see what Grantaire’s been working on lately.  “Five minutes, top.”

“Déjà vu,” Grantaire greets him.  It’s a much happier greeting than it would have been not two months ago, and Enjolras feels something warm settle into his chest at the thought.  “You going to punch me in the face again?”

“I never punched you in the face.  I’m pretty sure a lamp has that honor.”

Grantaire laughs and covers up the page he’d been working on before Enjolras can get a close look.  He thinks he sees curly hair, a furrowed brow, but that’s it.  Grantaire shifts the sketchbook casually out of Enjolras’ reach.  “Yeah,” he says, “after you gestured so angrily that you sent it speeding towards me.”

“Hey, you got your revenge on the way down.” Enjolras nods to the stacks of chairs lining the walls of the Musain.   They’re placed much further away from the ABC meeting space than they used to be.  Courfeyrac still hasn’t stopped making “chair-ity” jokes about how much money they spent to replace the ones they broke.  “Though we never had that fencing match on top of a pool table.”

Grantaire taps the side of his nose and grins.  “Sure we didn’t, Enjolras.”

They’re discussing the relative pros and cons of the Keystone XL pipeline that day, and no one is even remotely shocked when Enjolras and Grantaire get into a knockdown, drag-out argument about the passing the bill.

“The number of oil spills and highway accidents would be reduced over a hundred fold.  They’re going to keep milking tar sands no matter what we do,” Grantaire says.  He’s already on his feet, hands carving frustrated patterns into the air.  The few club members that haven’t already left are watching in amusement, whispering among themselves.  Joly, Bossuet, and Musichetta look like they’re doing something more intimate than whispering.  “Why not allow them a safer way to transport their spoils?”

“Because we’re never going to reach carbon neutrality or energy efficiency if we keep gorging ourselves on fossil fuels,” Enjolras says, leaving his makeshift podium to stalk closer to where Grantaire is standing.  They’re scarcely a foot apart by his next point, tension vibrating narrow between them like a string pulled too tight.  Combeferre thinks, spontaneously, of a study he’d read about sustained eye contact, and how more than six seconds would lead to either violence or making out.  He squints at them, suddenly suspicious, and decides that he trusts them not to come to blows.  “And that’s not even touching the amount of habitat fragmentation that will result.”

Blow _jobs_ , on the other hand.  Combeferre and Courfeyrac look at each other, equally long-suffering.  The majority of _Les Amis_ had long since left for the Corinth to celebrate the start of Spring Break.  Even Bahorel, lover of a good fight, has given up on their fearless leader and his fearless critic and headed for warmer climates or warmer beds.  Combeferre looks at Enjolras and Grantaire yelling nose to nose and surrenders to inevitability.

“We’ll see you tomorrow for brunch, Enjolras,” Combeferre says over his shoulder as he shrugs his sweater on.  Courfeyrac is already at the entrance, and the sounds of debate continue until the glass doors of the Café Musain close behind them.

-

Combeferre has had a key to Enjolras’ apartment since sophomore year, and after three increasingly loud knocks on Enjolras’ door, he uses it.

“Rise and shine, sleeping beauty,” Courfeyrac calls as they follow the faint sounds of life into the kitchen.  Enjolras barely looks up from his attempts to summon a cup of coffee from his French press.  The shirt he’s wearing is big enough to be hanging off of his shoulders, and Courfeyrac can’t help but laugh when he sees what it says.

“Oh, chief, did you lose a bet?” he asks.  “That’s false advertising, you know.  Someone might get the wrong idea about your sexual proclivities.”

Behind him, Courfeyrac hears someone snort.  He turns in shock to watch Grantaire stumble into the kitchen, _pro patria mori_ stretched tight across his broad chest. 

“No, not really,” Grantaire says, like he’s still having some trouble believing it.  Courfeyrac hesitates to count the hickeys trailing down his neck. “Based off of my experience?  They’d have the right idea entirely.”

Enjolras smiles into his coffee and decides to keep the shirt.

 

**Author's Note:**

> “Thou and I are too wise to woo peaceably.”  
> ― William Shakespeare, Much Ado About Nothing
> 
>  
> 
> Thanks for reading!
> 
> If you have any questions at all about the environmental issues that E and R raise, feel free to ask me about them. I'm always happy to discuss the barricade boys and the environment, and I'd be ecstatic to talk about either or both of them with you.
> 
> ( infinitecombinations.tumblr.com )


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